I thought I would share bits and pieces of my life. I am a lifelong Christian. I have been married for over 39 years to Stan. No children. We have 1 Miniature Pinscher named MoneyPenny and 3 Italian Greyhounds named Persephone, Dresden and Capodimonte and a calico cat named Binky. We have 9 nieces/nephews and 7 grandnieces/nephews whom we love. My hobbies are genealogy, reading, digital scrapbooking, history, dogs, homemaking.

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..........Contact me at Mom25dogs@gmail.com.........

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Arctic Circle by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler

If you have read my blog, then you already know that I'm a Clive Cussler fan! I try to get his books as they come out and I devour them.

The Prologue to Arctic Circle was good. The Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage disappears. Later, it was found that both the Terror and the Erebus were stuck in the ice during a short summer. Some of the men began to exhibit insanity. Eventually, the survivors left the ships and tried to push lifeboats on sleds filled with provisions across the ice to find civilization. But men died one by one of the cold and exposure and never made it. A letter was left in a cairn of stones at one spot. This much I know to be true because I've read about it and seen documentaries on TV about this tragedy.

Cussler weaves his story around this historical event. He imagines the ships have a metal called ruthenium on board. Inuit hunters find this ship caught in the ice and take the interesting rocks with the hard silver metal in them back and sell them to a Canadian mining co-op.

Now, modern times. Mitchell Goyette is a billionaire who is interested in how to make more billions. With global warming, more of the arctic ice is melting and revealing land and opening seaways to areas that had been, otherwise, impassable. He wants the mineral and mining rights to these areas. Canada wants to declare the Northwest Passage an internal waterway that they control rather than an international waterway open to the world. How does Mitch Goyette manipulate Canada into closing off the Northwest Passage to America? How does he machinate to get all the mining and mineral rights to these far north areas? How does Dirk Pitt stop him?

I would have to say, that this book was a little less than his normal excellence. Still a good read, lots of adventure and excitement, plausible schemes and rescues (except for the working guns on the Erebus) and a satisfying ending. But it was a little slow, after the Prologue, to get started and Dirk Pitt and his children are working on the same situation but never communicate with each other which is odd. Cussler uses all his usual characters such as Dirk's wife, Loren, Perlmutter, Al Giordino, etc. Rudi Gunn was basically mentioned but not part of the story.